


Don't Ask Me

by lar_laughs



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-18
Updated: 2012-09-18
Packaged: 2017-11-14 12:54:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/515439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lar_laughs/pseuds/lar_laughs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She thought she knew what she wanted but she was wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Ask Me

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the hp_diversity prompt: _After her divorce/break-up with Harry, Ginny is pissed off and too proud to take any money from Harry or her family. When she winds up broke and needing cash fast she turns to her old friend Dean, a bounty hunter, and convinces him to give her a job. Things get crazy._
> 
> This story doesn't present Harry in the best light. This isn't meant as a slam on the character but I needed to abuse him to make the prompt fit. I apologize to anyone who finds that offensive.

“You going to tell me anything about the lack of wedding band to go with that ring of white around your finger?”

Ginny found herself rubbing at the patch of skin, wishing she’d had enough money to replace the ring that had graced her hand for the past five years ago. Nothing made her feel more like a failure than the absence of the celebrated diamond and ruby ring Harry had given her to cement their life together. But it hadn’t been cement, had it? More like caulk and even that had been poorly mixed together.

“Not much to tell. He... I decided that I was tired of being an Auror’s wife. Really bad pay and we never saw each other.”

She watched as he blinked his surprise but he didn’t say anything. No, Dean had always weighed his words and today had been no different. Granted, she’d given him very little time to adjust to her arrival. It might be days before they discussed the reason Ginny had been on his doorstep as the sun rose over the treeline.

Now they were crouched in a copse of trees, waiting for the man Dean had been sent to bring back to the Ministry for questioning. It could be hours. It could be days. Dean hadn’t been able to give her a timeline on when the job would be done and she could pocket her half of the reward.

“Your family doesn’t mind that you dropped everything to come with me to Belize? It’s not exactly this year’s vacation destination.”

It was easy to tell that what he was really asking was _Why did your eyes light up when you discovered this job would take you out of the country?_ but, once again, he had the good grace not to put it in so many words.

“I’m sure they would wish me well on my endeavors, were they to know about them.”

“Any reason they don’t?”

Ginny sighed. “Look, Dean, it’s a sordid story and nothing that ends well so I don’t know why you want to know. I know you and Harry are still friends and I’d like to keep it that way. Like I said before, I need the money right now. One of things I... we had to sell was my broom and I have the possibility of getting to play again if I can get myself a decent broom.” Not to mention, it would be nice to have a place to live that didn’t come with roommates or wasn’t infested with bugs. “Let’s not talk about it. The truth will come out sooner or later. Best to let sleeping dogs lie until then.”

“Fair enough.” He pulled a water bottle out of his pack. “Drink up. The sun’s going to get hotter. Best to keep ahead of the dehydration if you can.”

She took a drink, enjoying the sense of freedom in not having to think of a way to rephrase her life for the last year so that it sounded presentable. Because of Harry’s job, Ginny had never felt comfortable complaining to anyone about what was happening between them. She didn’t have many friends that would see her side of the issue without being prejudiced. Even her family always seemed to take his side.

“We aren’t friends.”

For a moment, she thought he was referring to the two of them. The tears she’d been holding on to with an iron grip for the last few months threatened to slip out. “What?”

“Harry and I. We aren’t friends. You and I are friends. Harry and I were just... roommates.”

As the realization sunk in, Ginny couldn’t keep her mouth shut. Everything came out in a strained voice that didn’t sound much like hers but still had a core of steel running through it. She told him about the first time that Harry didn’t come home for weeks at a time, how she’d been beside herself with worry because surely he could send a message. “He told me it was part of the job. That he needed to be gone. I needed to accept that. And so I did. If he didn’t care enough to let me know where he was going, I didn’t figure I should tell him where I was going to be.”

“Wasn’t your schedule posted?” Dean asked, a bit of sarcasm lacing his words.

“You’d think, wouldn’t you? He got so angry but the worst part was that he threw my words back at me. That it wasn’t fair that he had to worry about me.” She took another drink of the water, barely registering what she was doing but thankful for the slight distraction. “That was just the tip of the iceberg. We fought about everything. Money was the least of our worries for awhile but then I got hurt and we had to spend money-”

“Had to? You act like it was your fault you got hurt.”

Ginny blinked. That was exactly what it sounded like. What it had felt like, too.

When she didn’t answer, he reached out to touch her arm. The contrast of his dark skin against her freckled paleness broke the dam keeping her tears in place. The memories of a particular winter day when they’d laced their hands together for warmth as they’d taken a break from studying (and Ron’s glares) came to mind. He’d kissed each of her knuckles, stopping to pay extra special attention to the healing cut on one of her fingers. No one had cared about her scrapes and scuffles quite like Dean had.

“Is that why you sold your broom? To pay for therapy?”

She nodded, unwilling to talk about that period in her life. In one fell swoop, Harry killed the last of her dreams of freedom. He’d wanted a _Ministry Wife_ and her Quidditch playing was getting in the way of that particular wish of his. As she’d struggled to regain full movement in her shoulder, he’d worked at reforming her in the image of what he wanted.

“It’s all for the-” 

Dean put his hand over her mouth, his body suddenly tense and alert. When she stilled, she felt the same unease that had alerted him to the change in their surroundings. Everything had gone quiet. Too quiet.

He caught her gaze, his eyes staying on hers before sliding down and to the right. A signal? There was nothing there. No, that wasn’t right. There was her healed shoulder. _Can you do this?_ he was asking her.

The tightening of her jaw under his hand was the only real answer she got to telegraph to him instead of the _Of course, I can, you great git_ she wanted to yell at him. He worried about her. That was as sweet as it was infuriating. 

He pulled his hand away from her mouth, clenching it into a fist. One finger straightened. A second followed it. As the third extended, he mouthed, “Go.” As if they’d practiced the move, she was spinning away from him. He used her momentum to spin in the opposite direction, his wand out before he’d even completed one rotation around.

On the Hogwart’s Quidditch team, the joke was that she always went high when given the option. Her witty reply was that any girl should opt for the top. All her talk of brooms and Quidditch teams reminded her of the joke and she stood tall as she leveled her wand out. If she was wrong and he didn’t remember those jokes and hadn’t wanted her to aim high, she was going to hex her partner instead of the man they were hunting.

The shadowed glade filled with bright colour and a peircing scream then fell into silence and gloom once again. “Dean?” she whispered, unwilling to check to see that her handiwork hadn’t maimed him.

“You can still shoot straight. That’s good.”

She was about to answer when his lips found hers, firm and insistant. It was the first intimate contact she’d had with someone in years. Yes, years. Harry’s kisses, when he’d deigned to give them out in those final gasps of their relationship, had been stiff reminders of just how much she was lacking.

“Quit thinking of him,” he murmured against her lips before he plunged forward again, knocking any thought of her past out of the way. For the moment, she accepted his brand of healing because she had nowhere else to go.

When she forced herself to pull away, he was staring at her with the same wonder in his eyes he always had when they were dating. It was strange to be looked at with such... adoration wasn’t the right word. It was more than that. 

Ginny struggled to place the look. She’d seen it somewhere before. It certainly wasn’t like any of the glances that Harry had ever used when looking at her, not even in those early days when they’d had each other and the rest of the world be damned.

“You look like my brother.”

The harsh laugh was interrupted by the moaning of the man laying prone on the ground. They both turned on him, sending out equally effective spells that had him sprawling bonelessly in the grass once again.

“I don’t think I look anything like your brothers. Maybe you got knocked on the head one time too many times while you were up on that broom.”

“No. Not your hair or skin color. That look you always give me. Bill looks like that when he looks at Fleur. Like he can’t believe that she’s still there when he opens his eyes.”

Dean cleared his throat and quickly averted his eyes. “I’m not your brother.”

“You look just like him. And Ron looks like sometimes, too. It’s like... it’s...” _It’s love._ The thought had her reeling away from him, her lungs suddenly unable to hold in enough air to satisfy the rest of her body. “You can’t,” she gasped out as he came over to inspect her for sudden wounds.

“Can’t what? What’s wrong?”

She held his face between her hands, her breath coming in pants. This was the same Dean she remembered from school, only a little more worn around the edges. Nothing about the way he felt about her had changed, no matter the time and distance between them. “You can’t love me. I’m not-”

“Stop. Right now. For your information, you are lovable. And for another, I don’t love you. Not at all. If I loved you, I would never have let you go. I would have fought harder for you and kept you from leaving with him instead of me. I would have... would have showered you with take-away and cheap movies at the Cinaplex. What a life, huh?”

“I’ve never been to a movie before.”

He groaned. “Don’t do this to me, Gin. Don’t look at me like that. Like I should get comfortable to you being here. You don’t need movies. You have... Quidditch.”

“And what did Quidditch ever do but bust up my shoulder?”

“What did I ever do for you?”

Her thumbs smoothed over the edges of his mouth. On her own lips, his were hot but they were surprisingly smooth and cool when she touched them with her fingers. “You let me walk away. And you let me come back. You’ve never judged me and you’ve always let me be me.”

“So?”

“So... no one else has ever done that before.”

Their captured prey began to moan softly but he didn’t move as they both turned to look at him again. Dean wrapped his arm around Ginny, drawing her close to his side. “I know you said you only wanted to help out on a few jobs but you’re very good at this. Maybe you want to stick around a little longer.”

“For how long?”

“Forever.” His voice was soft enough that she could have chosen to not hear him if she’d wanted to. 

The problem was, she didn’t want to ignore him. Suddenly, getting the new broom didn’t seem so urgent. Quidditch had been around for hundreds of years and she was still in her prime. There was all the time in the world to get back on the team again. Dean’s offer might never come around again. She’d thrown away enough _once in a lifetime_ in her lifetime to know she needed to grab on to this offer with both hands but there was something inside that was still hesitant.

“How about a month? We’ll talk about it at the-” He stopped her with another hard and fast kiss but she didn’t let him adle her brain this time. “No, Dean. We’ve only just met again after time away. One successful job doesn’t mean-”

This time it was the blast of a spell as it hit the tree behind him that captured her attention. Dean grinned down at her. “Now it gets fun. They’ve come for him. You ready for this?”

She laughed, holding her wand out at the ready. “Always.”

“Good enough for me.”


End file.
